Sunday, 25 June 2017

For most of last year my local cinema in south London was in a state of chaos, being ripped apart and undergoing extensive renovations. While part of this project was to generally upgrade the screens and seating — a good thing — another major objective was to install a new 4DX screen.

"What the hell is 4DX?" I hear you ask. Well, when I described it to a buddy of mine he laughed and said "It's The Tingler!" Which was hilarious, because that had been exactly my own reaction. The Tingler was a low budget 1959 horror movie by a huckster of a producer named William Castle. To promote it, Castle dreamed up a contrivance called Percepto. This involved having seats in the cinema wired so they would vibrate at a certain point in the movie. It was a cheap and silly gimmick.4DX also makes your seat vibrate. And it does more than that, but allow me to quote from the publicity blurb: "Providing a revolutionary cinematic experience which stimulates all five senses, the 4DX includes high-tech motion seats and special effects including wind, fog, lightning, bubbles, water, rain and scents, in both 2D and 3D formats. These effects work in perfect synchronicity with the action on screen – creating the most unmissable and exhilarating cinematic experience yet."

Friends... it is just another cheap and silly gimmick. Though it's not cheap in terms of admission prices — a full-price adult ticket is around £20. Even so, I was tempted to check out this unmissable and exhilarating cinematic experience. So as soon as the 4DX screen opened, I tried to see Rogue One there. Unfortunately, the 4DX system had broken down, as it did frequently in the first few weeks.

But I have finally caught a movie in 4DX — Wonder Woman — and I can describe what it's like. (I will write about the Wonder Woman film itself in a separate post.)

First, it has to be said that the 4DX seats are big and comfy. But soon they are in constant motion. For instance, when we see the Amazons on horseback, our seats jog us as if we're riding a horse.Now, this might make sense if it was a point-of-view shot of somebody who is riding a horse. To put you into the skin of the rider, so to speak. But it makes no sense at all if you have a long shot of somebody riding a horse in the distance.Similarly, in a fight scene, as the good guys and bad guys punch each other, our seats jerk around and we get jabbed in the back — the effect is a bit like a massage chair gone rogue.

But why, when the bad guy hits the ground, do we feel an impact? Are we supposed to be the bad guy?This confusion about viewpoint is one of the fatal flaws of the system. But there are plenty more. When a strong wind starts blowing in a scene, a big wind machine starts up in the cinema — making a hell of a racket and ruining our enjoyment.

And then there are the puffs of air. In the back of your seat, on either side of your head, are two small holes. These emit violent and noisy blasts of cold air onto your face to — supposedly — mimic the feel of a near miss as a bullet or an arrow whizzes past to you.It's difficult to describe how annoying this is. I was soon dreading any gunfight or use of the bow and arrow. I ended up trying to stick wads of Kleenex into the goddamned holes to block them (it wasn't very effective).There are controls on the arms of your chair, but unfortunately these only allow you to turn off one option — the drop of water in the face. A good idea, for those of us who don't want to contract Legionaire's disease. But it did nothing to stop the goddamned puffs of air.

4DX is a waste of time and I can't believe it will ever catch on. It won't save a bad movie but it will certainly spoil a good one. Luckily Wonder Woman was sufficiently excellent to survive the 4DX treatment, but many other movies wouldn't be.

I recommend avoiding the 4DX experience, but if you do go you might find yourself sorely tempted to use some chewing gum to block those bloody air puffs.

Sunday, 18 June 2017

To say that I wasn't a fan of the previous (highly successful) Mummy franchise, created by writer-director Stephen Sommers, would be to put it mildly.

Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weiss were terrific, but the movies themselves were junk. Overblown, incoherent, with no narrative armature or emotional core.

They dumped a ton of CGI on the audience instead of bothering with niceties like empathy or story or characterisation.So it's sad to report that the new reboot of the series falls into exactly the same trap. And it really didn't need to. The cast is even stronger this time, and the movie begins really well...Nick (Tom Cruise) and Chris (Jake Johnson) are theoretically attached to the US Army in Iraq, but basically they're there to loot antiquities.

Beautiful archaeologist Jenny (Annabelle Wallis, from Peaky Blinders) has a map of unique treasure site, given her to by the mysterious and powerful Henry (Russell Crowe).Nick and Chris steal the map and are the first to arrive at the site. And given the title of the movie, there's no prizes for guessing what they find there...This whole section of the movie is very effective and culminates in Nick, Chris and Jenny flying back with a sarcophagus in a military transport plane, which breaks apart over England in a scene which — while far from original — is thrilling fun.The rest of the movie takes place in England, and mostly in London. If the plane crash was reminiscent of Monster Squad, much else — such as the running gag of Nick's now dead friend Chris popping up all over the place — calls to mind An American Werewolf in London.On the other hand, the Mummy (played by the striking Sofia Boutella, who was so great in Kingsman and Star Trek Beyond) has the power to summon masses of rats and other vermin in a manner which is reminiscent of Dracula.

This actually makes a lot of sense, when you consider the true, uncredited, source of all the Mummy movies is probably Dracula's creator, Bram Stoker, in the shape of his novel The Jewel of Seven Stars.But where The Mummy goes fatally off the rails is when it drags in the work of another great Victorian Gothic novelist. Because the 'Henry' whom Russell Crowe portrays turns out to be Dr Henry Jeckyll — yes, that's right, as in Dr Jeckyll and Mr Hyde. This just makes no sense at all. It's a wild lurch into the territory of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen or Penny Dreadful, but the movie doesn't pull it off, and never recovers from it. The descent into boring, silly and meaningless action is precipitous and irreversible.The characters, and the audience, are soon buried under a numbing avalanche of dull CGI.

What a pity. This was so nearly a really good summer popcorn movie.

(Image credits: All the posters are from good old reliable old Imp Awards.)

Sunday, 11 June 2017

I love a good thriller, and this is a great thriller. It is set in London, and concerns an American agent who is forced to go rogue because she is menaced from all sides and doesn't know who to trust.

In these respects it is reminiscent of another excellent espionage adventure, Survivor, written by Philip Selby.

Unlocked is the work of Peter O'Brien. It is his first screenplay but, as the saying goes, judging by this it certainly won't be his last.

If O'Brien is a newcomer then the film's director Michael Apted is an old hand. His many credits in a long and distingushed career include a Bond film, The World is Not Enough.Unlocked is gripping, suspenseful and it kept me guessing. I was pleasurably surprised more than once by sudden twists in the plot.

The only real flaw it has is in following a very hoary cliché. Cynical viewers would guess from the beginning that the heroine's black friend is marked for death.

As soon as we see his happy home life, and watch him playing with his beloved infant daughter, we know his fate is sealed...Other than that, though, full marks for a great script. Well researched, fast moving and very hard-edged. In its ruthlessness it reminded me a little of the spy thrillers by Trevanian like The Eiger Sanction.Unlocked has a particularly spectacular cast. Noomi Rapace is perfect in the lead role, but the support includes Michael Douglas and John Malkovich as CIA chiefs, Toni Collette as a senior British spook and, best of all, Orlando Bloom as an ex-soldier turned burglar.For years I had a theory that Bloom was only viable in movies where he could swordfight with the bad guys. Here he proves me comprehensively wrong. He's achieved a new maturity and seriousness.Unlocked is a first rate action movie. Don't miss it.

But Prometheus's really fatal error was including a clip from Lawrence of Arabia, thereby reminding us of what a real film, indeed a masterpiece, looked like. In a way, Alien: Covenant makes an even more devastating mistake.

In a sequence where the spunky heroine (Katherine Waterston as Daniels) jams a nail into the evil android's face, as he attacks her, the evil android jovially comments, "That's the spirit!"This is of course a quote from Blade Runner. In which Roy Batty, the evil android played by Rutger Hauer says exactly the same thing to Harrison Ford's cop during a similar battle.

Whatever possessed Ridley Scott to allow this? Because, again, we're are reminded of how much better that earlier film was than the one at hand. And, in this case, they're both Ridley Scott films.The evil android in Alien: Covenant is played by Michael Fassbender, and my heart sank when he appeared. Because, although Fassbender is a tremendous actor, that damned android was pretty much the worst thing in Prometheus. And here he is again.But Fassbender's android is far from the worst thing in Alien: Covenant. The worst thing in Alien: Covenant is the behaviour of the space crew. They land on an alien planet and, just because there's an Earth-like atmosphere, they dispense with space suits and biohazard gear.Why would they use such stuff? Because there is the danger of being infected, for example, by some lethal spores that are going to put vicious alien parasites in your body. Which is indeed exactly what promptly happens to two of the landing party.

When one of these chumps begins to develop symptoms of a dramatic infection, the pilot of the landing craft very sensibly locks him in isolation in the medical bay. But when the symptoms intensify to full chest-burster status, what does she do? She unlocks the door and charges in with a shotgun...

The results are not happy. In their utter disregard for contamination protocols, and indeed just plain lack of common sense, the protagonists of Alien: Covenant are eerily similar to the characters in the recent SF/horror movie Life.

But scientists and technicians simply don't behave like this. And when you make the heroes of your movie do so, you lose all sense of reality and any sympathy the audience might have for those characters.There are many things wrong with Alien: Covenant, but this is the worst. Its protagonists are so utterly stupid that, to be blunt, they deserve to die.Alien Covenant is vastly better than Prometheus. But it is still really, really bad.

(Image credits: The posters are all from Imp Awards. The one which simply says "Run" actually offers useful advice to the prospective viewer.)